The question has been doing the rounds for weeks now: will he or won’t he? Today the answer came: he won’t. Brown won’t call for an early election:
Mr Brown told the BBC he had had a “duty” to consider whether to hold an election, but decided against it so he could show his “vision” for Britain.
[…]
He denied the opinion polls had led to the decision not to hold an election, saying: “I have a vision for change in Britain and I want to show people how in government we’re implementing it.”
Pressed on the decision, Mr Brown said that the series of crises since he became PM in June meant “the easiest thing I could have done is call an election. I could have called an election on competence”.
He added: “We would win an election, in my view, whether we had it today, next week or weeks after.”
But, he said: “I want the chance in the next phase of my premiership to develop and show people the policies that are going to make a huge difference and make a change in the whole country itself.”
That’s typically New Labour, to always talk as if they’ve just come into power, to ignore their own history. It’s always new policies, more change, new approaches, new opportunities for the people of Britain, as if the past ten years of Labour governments never happened and the Tories have just been ousted from power. This way their own mistakes and failed policies are swept under the carpet, while keeping the momentum of a new government. Having an early election would be part of that process, if Brown had been confident he could’ve won and won convincingly. But he bottled out and now he’s going to recreate this momentum the oldfashioned New Labour way: with lots and lots of new, improved, not very well thought out policies.
However, none of this changes one very important fact: that Brown has become the prime minister of Britain without ever having had a mandate from the voters.